Sex, drugs & bad de­ci­sions

Lindiwe Ngema tries to look grown up by in­tro­duc­ing some “adults only” ac­tiv­i­ties to her life.

In March last year, naughty Lindiwe Ngema (Nomvelo Makhanya) was black­mailed into shoplift­ing by The Plas­tics, the pop­u­lar girls at her school. Lindiwe bunked school, par­tied and drank un­til she was shocked sober when The Plas­tics’ bul­ly­ing drove Lindiwe’s friend Mary (Mikateko Hla­bang­wane) to at­tempt sui­cide. But ever since her half-sis­ter Om­phile (Botl­hale Boikanyo) moved into the fam­ily home in Novem­ber last year, the clouds have been gath­er­ing again. And the con­stant crit­i­cism about how im­ma­ture Lindiwe is will lure her into some new “adult” ac­tiv­i­ties that she might not be ready for.

SIS­TER BLIS­TERS

“Lindiwe feels as though Om­phile has in­vaded her space. She doesn’t have pri­vacy any­more and her par­ents (Pa­trick Mo­fo­keng and Gcina Nkosi) are tak­ing care of Om­phile more than they are of her. It’s al­ways, ‘Om­phile’s do­ing X, so you should do X. Om­phile can help you do this be­cause Om­phile is good at that’… It’s never- end­ing,” ex­plains Nomvelo. “She just feels as though she’s the black sheep of the fam­ily. No one un­der­stands her and no one wants to un­der­stand her. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s Lindiwe the drama queen. She’s al­ways so dra­matic about ev­ery­thing. She’s an at­ten­tion seeker.’”

COR­NER­ING KABZA

Lindiwe wishes that she could just grow up too – but she’s got a few crossed wires about what that means. “She thinks that other peo­ple see­ing that she has a boyfriend will al­low them to think that she is a woman now.” So Lindiwe sets her sights on her brother Scelo’s (Mbulelo Nd­lazil­wana) friend Kabza (Buhle Nh­lapo). On Thurs­day 4 Fe­bru­ary, Lindiwe cor­ners Kabza and pours her prob­lems in his ears, then sends Kabza a mes­sage pre­tend­ing to be Scelo so that she can set up a meet­ing with him and se­duce him.

FIRST KISS, FIRST PUFF

Mary con­fronts Lindiwe about bunk­ing school on Thurs­day 11 Fe­bru­ary but Lindiwe can’t hear any­thing but the beat­ing of her own heart – she’s just kissed Kabza and she can’t wait to tell. It was Nomvelo’s first on-screen kiss and she gig­gles, then laughs out loud about it. “It’s an okay kiss, I guess. There’s re­ally not much to say. She goes on about it to her best friend Mary, like, ‘Oh my gosh, it was so mag­i­cal!’ but you look at it and you’re like, ‘Okay Lindiwe, it’s just a kiss.’” What­ever she is feel­ing, her kiss­ing part­ner’s not on­board. “Some­times boys act in a cer­tain man­ner be­cause it’s in their na­ture. And then the girl is like, ‘Oh this guy is do­ing this be­cause he prob­a­bly likes me,’” hints Nomvelo. And snatch­ing at adult­hood again, Lindiwe tries to get in on the act when Kabza drops by with a dagga joint. Fib­bing Lindiwe claims that she has smoked be­fore, only for her grown-up games to back­fire spec­tac­u­larly when the dagga doesn’t agree with her…